tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post1030835469273528796..comments2018-05-14T15:57:17.930-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Partners in Grief: Andrew and the Starving MermedoniansJeffrey Cohenhttps://plus.google.com/110433684739546897626noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-31405802640181667882007-09-13T19:23:00.000-04:002007-09-13T19:23:00.000-04:00Perhaps on the wrong track - I have not read OE An...Perhaps on the wrong track - I have not read OE Andreas or managed to get hold of Blurton's work... Is it that the cannibalism element here is simply an emphasis on the need to reach Christ via the Eucharist, revealed by the panic of being starved of God's presence? I have read of texts (including sections of the Bible I believe) that link hunger and the psychological/eschatological need for salvation.<BR/><BR/>Following on from theswain's point: there was a deep-seated link between illness and God's divine judgement/destiny, which certainly changed medieval views on medicine and healing, so surely this would also impact on the view of the body in medieval times? If the body is seen as the vessel for the soul/is controlled by God's divine judgement/destiny, then wouldn't the cannibalism in this text link also to concepts of damnation, not just salvation?<BR/><BR/>Again, I haven't read far into this topic and am therefore clutching at straws somewhat!Sceopellenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17273786186979606868noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-32998437388063412282007-08-10T00:18:00.000-04:002007-08-10T00:18:00.000-04:00THat's what I get for coming to this third....all ...THat's what I get for coming to this third....all the good references to Abraham and Ugolino which I thought of have been done! Ah well.<BR/><BR/>I'd like to draw out Jeffrey's mention of Abraham a tad. The story as you know does not mention anthrophagy, but such sacrifices at least in the ANE were often meals...sacrifice the bull, sheep, child etc but the rest was a meal at least for the priests. Something like that lies behind the Abraham story that wants to one up so to speak the other ANE gods....Abraham's experience was only a test, and a miraculous provision of a ram made it even better.<BR/><BR/>Back to the eucharist thing, of course, the whole typology of Abraham and Isaac as a type of God the Father sacrificing his son Jesus, but this time he does go through with it, and it does result in a "meal".<BR/><BR/>However, I'm not sure the line is as blurred as Blurton and Jeffrey make it. While the Mermedonians would be recognized as sympathetic in a way, in that starvation results in the comsumption of the young (one can always make more) to survive, at the same time, as Asa's examples illustrate this was done at the extremity, at the very limit of human survival and even then while the necessity might be recognized and so absolute censure withheld, nonetheless such actions were obviously neither the norm nor accepted as being the norm. Further, the Mermedonians are in these straits BECAUSE of their monstrous behavior of eating other humans....if that were not their food source, Andreas' freeing fo the captives would not cause them to be in the situation where they eat one another.<BR/><BR/>So while I agree that the Mermedonians are more sympathetically received in the Anglo-Saxon audience than by modern readers, I would still say that the line of demarcation is at least clearer than Blurton describes it.<BR/><BR/>Oh, eucharistic.....nearly forgot since this is the crux....the eating and drinking of the sacrament however is not just eating a human being, it is the consumption of the God-Man or the Man-God and so is transformative from this life to that life, and so I think at least in Anglo-Saxon reception would be in a different category than Mermedonian comestibles.theswainhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05919025515524894537noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-40445539612941056842007-08-08T18:08:00.000-04:002007-08-08T18:08:00.000-04:00I suspect that a really deep reading of the Ugolin...I suspect that a really deep reading of the Ugolino episode would clarify everything.<BR/><BR/>But seriously, what I really want to know, not having read the OE Andreas or Blurton, is why these cannibals are <I>dependent</I> upon human meat. In other words, there is a fascinating labor issue here, cannibalism as the absolute failure of labor! Is this a dimension that gets articulated in the sources, and if not, is it, whatever other discursive work cannibalism is doing in the Middle Ages (and this is especially relevant to the famine-sympathy insight), part of cannibalism's 'secret,' something that all psychologizing interpretations are in danger of missing? <BR/><BR/>Certainly by the time you get to Herzog ("Look! Meat!"), the labor failure is clear, but is there definite medieval precedent.Nicola Masciandarohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01279665722551517693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-40527499757483862642007-08-08T12:53:00.000-04:002007-08-08T12:53:00.000-04:00Karl, what's up with your handwriting? Sloppy, slo...Karl, what's up with your handwriting? Sloppy, sloppy.<BR/><BR/>The Mermedonian offering of the living child (and specifically of the son by a father) moves the episode in multiple directions. You've done an admirable job of contextualizing the act historically and discursively within famine stories; the reading adds yet another layer to Blurton's interpretation. But dad's can't sacrifice their little boys without making the act resonate allegorically: Abraham and Isaac, God and Jesus ... bringing us right back to the eucharist, I suppose.<BR/><BR/>Blurton's right, there is no easy line of demarcation to draw between the orthodox Christian and the cannibal Mermedonian, between the normal and the monstrous ... but isn't that true of nearly all Anglo-Saxon monsters? Think of Grendel, the dragon, the demons besetting Guthlac, the Hostes, the Donestre, <A HREF="http://jjcohen.blogspot.com/2007/01/straight-outta-newberry-giant-uppity.html" REL="nofollow">giant uppity women</A> ... do any offer crisp boundaries, unblurred lines?J J Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com